Posted on 07/01/2002 5:03:27 AM PDT by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - Following the 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that validated a taxpayer funded school voucher program for low-income students in Cleveland, Ohio, a Republican state senator from California announced he intends to follow suit.
State Sen. Ray Haynes, from Murrieta, Calif., said he would introduce legislation to "create real school choice" by offering vouchers to the state's low-income public school students.
In addition to Cleveland, the city of Milwaukee, Wisc., and the state of Florida already have school voucher programs on their books.
According to Haynes, the Supreme Court's decision "finally ends the debate over whether offering our families true school choice is somehow a violation of the Constitution."
Haynes' school choice bill will be based on model legislation developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which claims to be the nation's largest bipartisan membership of state legislators.
Haynes, a past national chairman of ALEC, said the model legislation would be designed to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling on appropriate private school programs.
"This bill would provide Education Certificates that could be redeemed by parents at any private, public, or charter school," Haynes said. "Parents who feel that the public schools in their area are failing their children would be free to take the certificate to a private school or charter school, finally introducing real competition to the education system."
However, Haynes said it would be difficult to move his school choice legislation "this late in the legislative session."
Andrew LeFevre, Director of ALEC's Education Task Force, said he believes the majority of state legislatures will face-off on school choice legislation in the 2003 legislative session.
"I certainly think that you're going to see a lot more states taking a closer look at voucher-type legislation in the next year or two because of the Supreme Court ruling," LeFevre said.
LeFevre believes the passing of school choice legislation nationwide would complete the civil rights movement's quest to provide equal schooling to low-income and minority families, something he said "this country over the past twenty, thirty years has just really not done a good job of."
But George Pieler, director of the Institute for Policy Innovation's Center for Education Freedom, warns against copying the Cleveland school choice program that the Supreme Court upheld.
"There'll be a temptation, to some degree, to sort of look narrowly at what the court decided on the facts of this particular program and say well, the safest thing to do is just copy that program," Pieler said.
The Cleveland voucher program might be copied in other urban areas without too much complication, Pieler said. However, "It might not work so well in rural areas and suburban areas," he added.
Pieler suggests legislatures considering school choice programs take from the Cleveland program "what works best here, what meets our [state's] needs and what supports the principles that we believe in."
"They should certainly look at what the court said ... because they don't want to get themselves into a ten-year litigation because the other side will be very aggressive in challenging these things," Pieler summarized. "But, on the other hand, they should also not be afraid."
E-mail a news tip to Michael L. Betsch.
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